My favorite things
November 25, 2007 by Bill
One of my all time favorite songs is from “The Sound of Music”. It is “My Favorite Things”. I never listen to that without feeling joyful. It always brings forth a smile. As I write these words at the beginning of the month for Thanksgiving I let my calendar of the soul take over and my head and heart are filled with gratitude for so many of my favorite things…that make life so good and the days so sparkling.
# Great hugs from those you love…and who love you. (this also lowers cholesterol we are told. It beats Oak Bran).
# The wild flowers of a rainy Spring…and the grasses of a showery summer. The solitude and silence of the winter months when the mountains are covered with snow…and our Mother Earth sleeps a while.
# Choosing a great book for morning reading with the winter rain falling outside my study window…and a hush covers the earth.
# Sitting mesmerized at night in our living room before a wood burning fire that draws me like in the days of the Cro Magnon caves when the fire kept us secure and safe…I have never understood how anyone can have an artificial fire with fake logs.
Respect for ignorance…a disease
November 18, 2007 by Bill
H.L. Mencken was one of the most respected scholars, writers and nationally syndicated columnists in American journalism. He wrote for the Baltimore Sun. His observations on “religious opinions” should be on everyone’s fridge door.
“The most unbelievable social convention of the age in which we live is the one to the effect that all religious opinions should be respected, no matter how ignorant.”
The insidious and seductive cliche that seems to saturate our society is…”you should not be critical of another person’s religious belief…they all deserve “respect”. No matter how ignorant…how bigoted…how ugly…how destructive…how false…how cruel…how superstitious…they all deserve “respect”.
It reaches the absurd point where a person cannot even write a scholarly critique on a religious belief without being labeled and attacked. Distinguished scholars such as Joseph Campbell, or Dr. James Bennett Pritchard who was the biblical advisor to National Geographic magazine and Time-Life books, write about the myth of the Hebrew patriarchs and the monumental exaggeration of Old Testament events and they are immediately attacked as being anti-semitic.
Edelen vs. the U.S.A.
November 11, 2007 by Bill
Hanging on the wall in my study is one of my favorite mementos, or keep-sakes. It is a legal document. It reads: “United States District Court, Western District of Washington, at Seattle.” Then comes the following that I love: “WILLIAM EDELEN vs.THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.”. The odds seem about even. I won, easily. It was no contest. Here is what happened.
There is a U.S. Naval Air Station on Whidbey Island, Washington. The Commanding Officer and Chaplain were glassy-eyed , “born again” fundamentalist Christians. They decided to schedule a Billy Graham “born again” revival on the Air Station. (U.S. Naval property). They advertised it as an “Old Fashioned Tent Revival”. Next, they mailed out the announcements on U.S. Navy stationery, using Naval personnel to do the leg work on the planned project. Such stupidity on the part of the Commanding Officer and others is just beyond comprehension.
I had written many columns on church-state relations and violations for Seattle newspapers. Knowing this a Seattle law firm called me one morning and said. “Bill, how would you like to sue the United States of America?” I said, “sure…why not?” The law firm calling me was one of the finest in the nation on church-state constitutional violations. Their lawyers had appeared , at that point, before the U.S. Supreme Court on 14 different cases and had not lost a single one. United States District Judge Donald Voorhees issued the following: “It is hereby ordered that the defendants appear before the undersigned judge at his courtroom and show cause why the court should not issue an order prohibiting the “Old Fashioned Tent Revival” at the Naval Air Station, Whidbey Island, Washington”: There it was. “WILLIAM EDELEN vs. THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.”
